Kansas Bobcats — What Happened to the Population? A 40-Year Local Observation

I started looking into Kansas furbearer numbers while researching whether putting up fur still makes economic sense today. What began as a question about fur prices turned into a much bigger question about Kansas bobcats. Kansas recorded 2,664 legally harvested and tagged bobcats during the 2024–25 season, and that number caught my attention, so I started going backward through the records. In 2010–11 Kansas tagged 4,809 bobcats. In 2011–12 it was 5,918. In 2012–13 it was 5,926, and in 2013–14 it was 4,990. By 2024–25 that number had fallen to 2,664. That puts the latest documented harvest about 45 percent below 2010–11 and about 55 percent below 2011–12. Kansas has 105 counties, so if that latest harvest were simply averaged across the state, it would amount to about 25 tagged bobcats per county. Butler County is roughly 1,447 square miles, which would work out to about one harvested bobcat for every 58 square miles. The roadside numbers caught my attention too. The recent Kansas roadside survey recorded a bobcat index of about 0.17 cats per 1,000 miles driven in the Southcentral Prairies. That is roughly one bobcat observation for every 5,900 survey miles. Those numbers do not tell us exactly how many bobcats are alive in Kansas, but taken together they sure do not paint a picture of an abundant population. I have another kind of record that does not come from a state report. I have lived in this part of Butler County for about 40 years. I hunt, trap, process deer, work hides, keep livestock and spend a great deal of time outdoors. From what I have personally observed over those four decades, bobcats are not as common here as they once were. At the same time, wild rabbits remain plentiful, along with raccoons and opossums, so at least in this immediate area the simple explanation that bobcats disappeared because there are no rabbits left does not fit what I am seeing. I also started looking outside Kansas. Oklahoma has done camera research that found some areas supporting much higher bobcat densities. Arkansas keeps stronger long-term furbearer records and currently describes its bobcat population as comparatively stable. South Texas is capable of supporting extremely high bobcat densities, including the large documented catches made by professional predator-control trappers such as Mark June. That leaves a pretty obvious question: what changed in Kansas? Habitat and land-use changes deserve a look. Predator and prey relationships deserve a look. Agricultural practices deserve a look. Chemical exposure deserves a look too. Research in other states has documented anticoagulant rodenticides in bobcats and has shown that secondary poisoning through prey can affect bobcat survival. I have not found comparable routine toxicology testing being done on Kansas bobcats. A couple of weeks ago my wife saw a bobcat cross the road near a bridge about half a mile from our house. She believed the cat was after a whitetail fawn. Two days later we walked the creek there and found what we believed was the fawn’s mother dead and partially eaten. The fawn stayed in the area for several more days. Eventually the local deer herd returned and later the fawn disappeared. I hope it rejoined the herd. That sighting gave me a good place to start watching for myself. I have a trail camera, and I am going to put it along that creek and bridge travel corridor. I intend to keep a record of bobcat photographs and video, dates and times, direction of travel, repeat appearances, recognizable markings and the other wildlife using the same corridor. One trail camera is not going to count every bobcat in Butler County, and that is not the point. I have already spent 40 years observing this country. Now I am going to start adding photographic evidence to those observations and build my own record of what is actually using this piece of Kansas country today. If you live in Kansas and are seeing bobcats, add what you are seeing below. County or general part of the state, approximate date and what you observed would all be useful.